"Gunboat Diplomacy: July 1914" (1 Viewer)

[PolarBear]

On the eve of World War I, warships of the German Imperial Navy are anchored in the harbor of Tsingtao, China, which was under German colonial control between 1897-1914.


Figure by Beau Geste. German Colonial Navy in Summer Dress (from set BG237A)

 

[damian]

On the eve of World War I, warships of the German Imperial Navy are anchored in the harbor of Tsingtao, China, which was under German colonial control between 1897-1914.


Figure by Beau Geste. German Colonial Navy in Summer Dress (from set BG237A)

We want eight and we won't wait

 

[PolarBear]

We want eight and we won't wait

Damian: Seven is all she wrote--the "swabbies" in East Africa

 

[damian]

The British Public would not stand Imperial Germany's Naval challenge to British supremacy. The Kaiser's plans to upgrade the German fleet prompted a demand for the British navy to build more of the fabled Dreadnoughts. The cry of "we want eight and we won't wait"became a popular jingoist slogan. Much like "Remember the Maine To hell with Spain" had been in the US a few years earlier. The naval arms race certainly helped set the scene for the cataclysmic events of August 1914.

 

[PolarBear]

The British Public would not stand Imperial Germany's Naval challenge to British supremacy. The Kaiser's plans to upgrade the German fleet prompted a demand for the British navy to build more of the fabled Dreadnoughts. The cry of "we want eight and we won't wait"became a popular jingoist slogan. Much like "Remember the Maine To hell with Spain" had been in the US a few years earlier. The naval arms race certainly helped set the scene for the cataclysmic events of August 1914.

Hi Damian

This is quite funny. I did not catch your jingoism reference and thought you wanted to see all of the sailors.
Here is an account ( actually a fish story) of how the word jingoism got started:

"In the mid-1880s, quarrels flared between the United States and Great Britain over fishing rights in the North Atlantic and in the Bering Sea off Alaska. These disputes reawakened Americans' latent anti-British feelings as well as the old dream of acquiring Canada. A poem published in the Detroit News (adapted from an English music hall song) supplied the nickname that critics would apply to the promoters of expansion---jingoists."

We do not want to fight,
But by jingo, if we do.
We'll scoop in all the fishing grounds
And the whole dominion too.

--------------------------------------------------

As a student of the art of Winslow Homer, who lived and worked along the coast of Maine and also knew the fishing fleets from Gloucester, Mass., I have felt that the series of paintings that he did in the mid 1880s of the Atlantic fishermen were a response to that dispute. Here in The Herring Net the 2 men are in the North Atlantic near the Canadian Maritimes scooping in all the fishing grounds. This would be an example of putting art to work for nationalist causes. The newspapers around Prout's Neck would have provided coverage of the dispute that I am sure caught Homer's attention.

 

[theBaron]

Access to the Grand Banks was a bone of contention even in colonial times, for the New England fishing fleet, if I am not mistaken, and was a specific item regulated in the final treaties at the end of the War for Independence.

 

[damian]

That is a wonderful painting Randy.
I feel like bursting into a chorus of
Jerusalem,
Land of Hope and Glory
and Rule Britannia

 

[PolarBear]

Access to the Grand Banks was a bone of contention even in colonial times, for the New England fishing fleet, if I am not mistaken, and was a specific item regulated in the final treaties at the end of the War for Independence.

In the 1880s American ships were boarded, the crews arrested, and the ships impounded. America was ready to go to war over this. As Hardy used to say to Laurel:"That's another fine kettle of fish you got us into"

 

[theBaron]

And all for a boatload of baccala...